Welcome to this
Sci.Electronics.Repair FAQ

Mirror Site

Welcome to the Sci.Electronics.RepairFrequently
Asked
Question(s)
(or S.E.R FAQ for short) Home Page. This site features
Samuel M. Goldwasser's latest and greatest
"Notes on the Troubleshooting and Repair of..."
series of comprehensive repair guides for consumer electronics equipment
and other household devices. There is also a great deal of other
information of interest to the electronics hobbyist, experimenter,
technician, engineer, and possibly even the dentist and poet. Included are
the now quite comprehensive and massive "Sam's Laser FAQ",
many new schematics, and links to over 1,000 technology related sites. In
addition, there are a variety of documents from other sources on electronics
troubleshooting, repair, and other related topics.

If you know of something that is incorrect or missing from this
site or simply have comments, friendly complaints, requests, or additions,
please make use of the absolutely and positively fabulous

or see the
Email Page to identify
the most appropriate recipient. Thanks!

Sci.Electronics.Repair FAQ Search on Drexel Mirror Site

The following provides a fast search facility but is currently only present
on the S.E.R FAQ mirror site at Drexel University (but this is one of those
that is maintained up to date almost daily). Clicking on the search links
below will take you to that site.

Sam's Laser FAQ

A major portion of the Sci.Electronics.Repair FAQ is the document:
"LASERS: Safety, Info, Links, Parts, Types, Drive, Construction" which has a
great deal of information on a variety of laser related topics including
a comprehensive treatment of diode, helium-neon, argon/krypton ion, and CO2
lasers as well as amateur laser construction including numerous examples of
truly home-built lasers. Much of this is not available anywhere else either
on-line or in print! Yes, I know what you are thinking: "I hadn't noticed
that any of my multitude of lasers were broken...", but so be it. :-)

Sam's Laser FAQ - A Practical Guide to Lasers for
Experimenters and Hobbyists.

This document is also available at many sites worldwide. As above, check the
Home and Mirror Site Locations page to
identify the best site for your needs.

Silicon Sam's Technology Resource

The SSTR documents are where my contributions to
the S.E.R FAQ start out but the large repair guides of the "Notes on
the Troubleshooting and Repair of...." series may not be as nicely formatted
(i.e., once Filip gets through indexing and cross-referencing them). In
general, additions to SSTR are minor. Therefore, the solutions to your
problems are likely to be accessible via the S.E.R FAQ pages - and in a much
more user-friendly form! However, if you long for the thrill of dealing with
raw ASCII (not even brain-dead HTML) or are desperate for bits that are hot
off my computer's hard drive, check out:

This collection is also available at many sites worldwide. As above, check the
Home and Mirror Site Locations page to
identify the best site for your needs.

Please Read at Least Once

A word about the philosophy of this site: These pages are declared to be a
fluff-free zone! There will be no unnecessary, superfluous, or useless
graphics of any kind - including but not limited to: dancing, gyrating, or
other animated icons, colored textured backgrounds that are impossible to
read through, or forced downloading of bit intense pictures that may be of no
interest to you. Nor, will I ever expect you to use a particular brand of
Web browser to be able to effectively access these pages. There are and never
will be any advertisements, cookies, or other impositions on your time and
space. In the time that it may take wading through a single monstrosity of
the professional Web page designers at other sites, you will be able to find
out what you want to know, when you want to know it! What a concept. :-)
(Note, however, that your browser needs to be configured properly to make
sense of the many ASCII diagrams, schematics, and tables. See the document:
Suggested Browser Settings for font and other
related information.)

In return for this gold mine of information, please make a serious effort to
find the answers to your questions before contacting me. It may take just a
wee bit of effort and could stress a few neurons in the process, but there is
an excellent chance that what you seek is covered at these sites. Should you
be really stuck, I will respond to email in a timely manner. However, if your
question indicates that you haven't even gotten past the Main Menu, AND I am
in a good mood, you will get a somewhat polite reply to read the #$%& FAQs.
On the other hand, if it is a bad day, and you are really really lucky, you
will probably be ignored. In any case, I expect to be able to hit the reply
key for my mail program and not get bounced email. I will not attempt to
unjumble any anti-SPAM email addresses! I have posted over 20,000 articles to
the USENET newsgroups using my true email address. (And, you won't pick up SPAM
via private email anyhow.) Yes, SPAM is a pain but I tolerate the small
amount I get so others will not be inconvenienced.

Note that where you have a model specific repair question, it will probably be
more expedient to post a complete but concise description of your problem
including manufacturer, model, symptoms, and what you have already tried,
directly to the USENET newsgroup:
sci.electronics.repair. I really
don't have access to that much model specific service information - and that is
probably what I will tell you to do anyway! See the document:
Troubleshooting and Repair of Consumer
Electronic Equipment for more information. Or, consult a Tech-Tips
database to see if your specific problem has already been solved a million
times. See the document: On-Line Tech-Tips
Databases.